In former days the ground they trod had been a pleasance the width of the
house, bordered, doubtless, by the forest. Trees grew out of the flower
beds now, and underbrush choked the paths. The box itself, that once
primly lined the alleys, was gnarled and shapeless. Labyrinth had
replaced order, nature had reaped her vengeance. At length, in the
deepening shade, they came, at what had been the edge of the old terrace,
to the daintiest of summer-houses, crumbling too, the shutters off their
hinges, the floor-boards loose. Past and gone were the idyls of which it
had been the stage.

They turned to the left, through tangled box that wound hither and
thither, until they stopped at a stone wall bordering a tree-arched lane.
At the bottom of the lane was a glimpse of blue water.

Honora sat down on the wall with her back to a great trunk. Chiltern,
with a hand on the stones, leaped over lightly, and stood for some
moments in the lane, his feet a little apart and firmly planted, his
hands behind his back.

What had Thalia been about to allow the message of that morning to creep
into her comedy? a message announcing the coming of an intruder not in
the play, in the person of a husband bearing gifts. What right had he, in
the eternal essence of things, to return? He was out of all time and
place. Such had been her feeling when she had first read the hastily
written letter, but even when she had burned it it had risen again from
the ashes. Anything but that! In trying not to think of it, she had
picked up the newspaper, learned of a railroad accident,--and shuddered.
Anything but his return! Her marriage was a sin,--there could be no
sacrament in it. She would flee first, and abandon all rather than submit